Xiaomi Halts The Sale Of Mi3 To Make Way For Redmi 1S


BANGALORE: With the shift in focus to launch the newly readied entry-level smartphone, Redmi 1S, it appears that the Chinese smartphone maker ‘Xiaomi’ will not hold anymore sales of its most sold Mi 3 smartphone in India, as it has suspended the sales of Mi 3 for an undefined period of time, reports By Danish Khan of ET.

Xiamoi which had to open registrations for its premium smartphone Mi3 came in for a huge surprise as it did not open fresh sales, after completion of its sixth flash sale on August 26. By this move it made sure that the company will only conduct sales for its newly readied Redmi 1S phone, which goes on sale on September 2, while the registrations for the sale already commenced on Flipkart.com, the sole retailer of Xiaomi products in India.

“Manu Jain, head of India operations at Xiaomi, said, "Due to bandwidth capacity issues, yes we are pausing Mi3 for a few weeks." He further added that "Our entire focus would be on one single product, which is the Redmi 1S. We are also trying to bring the Redmi Note in next couple of weeks."

Even though Xiaomi hasn't taken a call on when to resume its in-demand Mi3 sales, Jain said "When we started off, we grossly underestimated the demand for the Mi3, hence the order we had placed for the Indian market was significantly lower. To be honest, we goofed up on this part. It took time for us to ramp up the supply. "He further added, "Now, we are trying to correct this thing with the Redmi 1S. We should be able to bring much higher quantities of the Redmi 1S."

Along with these developments the Xiaomi is also currently testing the Mi4 smartphone in India and expects to bring it around end-2014. The Mi4 is a dual-mode smartphone and supports the fourth-generation telecom technologies of TDD-LTE and FDD-LTE.
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